Actor Tom Hanks clutched an iridescent gold envelope onstage at the Academy Awards two years ago and uttered, "These envelopes are works of art in themselves."
Those eight words from Hanks, the evening's first presenter, praised the newly revamped winners' envelopes from Marc Friedland, whose design debuted that night.
"I felt like I won the Academy Award by him saying that," Friedland told Mashable ahead of this year's Oscars ceremony on Feb. 24. "With all the technology and the pixels, paper still holds a place to convey an emotion and a memory that's going to last a lifetime."
As tech and social media continue to transform the Oscars into a digitally friendly experience for attendees and viewers, the envelopes have remained in paper format -- unlike at other award shows that have presenters read winners' names on tablets or teleprompters.
"I think the envelope is a really important keepsake," Friedland said. "This is really the Rolls-Royce of the award shows. It transcends trends, fashion and gadgetry."
"There would be too many security risks if [the envelopes] were to go digital."
Friedland worries hackers could leak the winners' names early or change the winners if the process became tech-based.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has used sealed envelopes to reveal the winners since 1941, incited by an incident with the Los Angeles Times, which leaked the winners of the 13th Academy Awards.
"It's probably the world's most famous envelope in the world," Friedland said.
"This envelope is something that is so low-tech, so ceremonial and so basic -- yet it demands such presence."
Although no signs point toward the Academy ditching Friedland's envelopes or the accompanying ruby-colored, lacquered cards that list the Oscar winners, Friedland is using digital tools to help make his designs more accessible to viewers.
Friedland wants you to experience his Academy-approved designs. To do so, he created 10 Oscar party invitations, which you can send via Evite Postmark to guests for free.
An estimated 55,000 to 70,000 digital invites have been sent for roughly 3,500 parties.
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Facts About the Winners' Envelopes and Cards
Number of Envelopes: 96 (One for each of the 24 categories. This year, four sets in total were created and hand-delivered to PricewaterhouseCoopers)
Number of man hours to create: 252
Number of nominee cards: 488 (122 total nominees for all categories, four sets in total)
Number of yards of ribbon: 40 yards of double-face burgundy satin
Number of yards of lacquered paper: 80
Number of sheets of custom-made gold iridescent stock: 100 28”x40” sheets
Number of square feet of gold leaf foil: 800
Number of different specialty processes: Over 10, including custom-made paper, hand-tooled die-making, laminating, hand-folding, hand-gluing, hand-wrapping, sheeting, hand-fed gold-leaf stamping, hand-fed embossing and imprinting of nominees' names.
Weight of each card/envelope: 4 ounces
Thickness of the winners' cards: One thirty-second of an inch
BONUS: 10 Fun Facts About Oscar Statuettes
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